| Rings of Power | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer | Naughty Dog |
| Publisher | Electronic Arts |
| Producer | Christopher Erhardt |
| Designers | |
| Programmers |
|
| Artist | Jason Rubin |
| Writer | Andy Gavin |
| Composer | Alexander Hinds |
| Platform | Sega Genesis |
| Release | |
| Genre | Role-playing |
| Mode | Single-player |
Rings of Power is a 1992role-playing video game developed byNaughty Dog and published byElectronic Arts (EA) for theSega Genesis. The player takes on the role of an apprenticesorcerer named Buc, whose quest is to assemble a team of adventurers and collect eleven rings to defeat the evil god Void.
The game was pitched under the working titleBuccaneer by Naughty Dog foundersAndy Gavin andJason Rubin following the release of their previous titleKeef the Thief, and was developed while the pair attended college in separatestates. It was originally intended for aPC andAmiga release until Gavin and Rubin happened upon – and decided to invest in – EA's secret operation of using makeshift development kits to create Genesis games withoutSega's permission; as a result,Rings of Power became Naughty Dog's first console video game.
The game received mixed reviews upon release, with critics praising its presentation and scope but criticizing its controls,scrolling, and gameplay. AlthoughRings of Power was a moderate commercial success, EA declined to reprint the game for technical and financial reasons. This experience discouraged Gavin and Rubin and convinced them to take a hiatus from the video game industry.
Rings of Power is arole-playing video game in which the player controls an apprentice sorcerer named Buc, who is tasked with exploring the land of Ushka Bau and gathering a team of five other adventurers, with whom he must collect the eleven titular Rings of Power in order to confront and defeat the evil god Void. The game is played from anisometric perspective and with a diagonal control scheme;[3] the camera zooms closer to Buc whenever he enters a building.[4] The game's setting can be traversed on foot or with an assortment of vehicles, including dinosaurs, boats, ships, and dragons. Magical gateways marked by a ring of statues are scattered across the setting and can transport Buc and his party to other locations in the world. The game features a day–night cycle, and many tasks and quests can only be accomplished during the day or the night.[5] Various characters can be conversed with to obtain information concerning the Rings or other quests at hand. Characters can also bebribed with currency, which can be used to gain information or unlock doors.[6]
Combat can either be initiated with a command while talking to a pedestrian or may occur randomly while traveling. During combat, Buc and his party are located on the left side of the screen and have blue shadows, while their opponents are located on the right side and have orange shadows. Each party member is equipped with astrength andmagic meter, which are affected by how much damage a character takes or the type of spells the character uses. A party member will die if their strength meter is fully depleted, and a character will only be able to cast weak spells if their magic is depleted. The player can set the party's spells to be selected automatically or manually, and can adjust how aggressively a party member behaves in a fight.[7] Winning a fight grants the party currency andexperience points,[3] which can be used to learn stronger spells.[8] Strength and magic can be restored by camping, which also accelerates the passage of time.[9]
Long ago, the divine being Nexus the Benevolent used the Rod of Creation to turn the desolate planet of Ushka Bau into a paradise. He then granted humanity the gift of the Six Arts: the Art of Separation, practiced by knights; the Art of Summoning, practiced by conjurors; the Art of Force, practiced by archers; the Art of Change, practiced by enchanters; the Art of the Body, practiced by necromancers; and the Art of the Mind, practiced by sorcerers.[10][11] After a long age of prosperity, Nexus's envious demonic brother Void the Destroyer stole the Rod and created an age of chaos that lasted 66 years. Nexus and Void engaged in a titanic battle that split the Rod in two, and each fled with half. They further divided their halves into eleven Rings of Power and hid them to keep each other from reassembling the Rod and taking power again.[10]
500 years later, the Rings have yet to be recovered and have passed into legend. However, the six Guildmasters discover strong evidence of the Rings' existence as well as clues to their locations. To prevent Void's minions from reassembling the Rod, each of the Guildmasters decide to charge six of their most promising students with forming a team of five other adventurers from each discipline and finding the Rings.[12] As the Guildmaster Thalmus the Wise prepares the top students of the Academy of the Mind for this quest, he is attacked and killed by Darius, a student who has fallen under Void's influence, and the other students are teleported elsewhere by Thalmus's dying word.[13]
Buc, the Academy of the Mind's most promising student, builds a team – consisting of the knight Slash, the necromancer Mortimer, the archer Feather, the conjuror Alexi and the enchanter Obliky – and sets out to gather the eleven Rings. After retrieving them, Buc and his team take the Rings to Nexus's seat at the Fount of Heaven and defeat Darius, who has become Void's physical vessel. Nexus transports Buc and the Rings to his realm and reassembles the Rod of Creation. Nexus leaves the Rod in Buc's care, claiming that keeping it in either his or Void's possession would upset the balance between them.[14] Upon returning to his world, Buc creates a mighty palace in the Fount of Heaven's place from which he rules from that day forward.[15]
Following the completion ofKeef the Thief in 1989, Naughty Dog founders Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin pitched a more ambitious role-playing game code-namedBuccaneer to EA, and requested $90,000 to develop the game; the budget would balloon to $150,000 by the end of the game's production. At the time, Gavin and Rubin were college seniors in different states, with Gavin atHaverford College inPennsylvania and Rubin at theUniversity of Michigan.[16][17] The pair spent a year trading information and data usingmodems ranging from 300 to 2,400baud. During the summers, they reconvened at Gavin's family home inVirginia to continue work on the game. These circumstances, as well as the size of the game, prolonged development from a projected two years to nearly three.[16][18]
Buccaneer, eventually titledRings of Power, was originally developed as a PC and Amiga release, although EA considered them to be weak platforms.[19] During a visit by Gavin and Rubin to EA's offices, Gavin immediately identified areverse-engineered Sega Genesis development kit – EA was privately using these kits to develop Genesis games without Sega's permission, with plans to use this ability as leverage against Sega to obtain a better licensing agreement from them. After pointing out the development kit, Gavin and Rubin were required by EA founderTrip Hawkins to signnon-disclosure agreements, upon which Gavin suggested thatRings of Power would make a suitable Genesis release. Hawkins agreed, wishing for Gavin and Rubin to invest in the success of EA's secret operation. As a result,Rings of Power became Naughty Dog's first console game,[18] as well as the second EA game to begin development for the Genesis.[20] Rubin later voiced regret for the decision to change platforms, as it affected the game's quality.[16]
The visuals forRings of Power were created by Rubin from 8×8-pixel 16-color blocks, with as many of these blocks being reused as possible. The game's world map took a total of six months for Rubin to lay out, and he flipped or alternated colors to break up the repetitiveness of the landscape.[21] EA's Genesis development kits altered surrounding electronic signals, which interfered with television reception. Because thewhite noise pattern would change depending on how busy the development kit's graphics hardware was, Gavin used the television across his dorm room as a debugging aid.[16] The game's dialogue was written by Gavin.[22] The amount of dialogue required Gavin and Rubin to compile and compress each of the script's words into "dictionaries" as a space-saving measure. The titular character ofKeef the Thief has a cameo appearance in the game as a non-player character.[21]Vijay S. Pande, then a physics student atPrinceton University inNew Jersey, was an additional designer and programmer on the game. The music was composed by Alexander Hinds, a first-year student at theStanford University School of Medicine inCalifornia.[17] TheRings of Power cartridge includes anEEPROM for the purpose of storing saved games.[16] However, less than one thousand bits of space are available on the cartridge for a saved game, and the data-packing measures result in a minuscule loss of in-game currency upon loading a saved game.[21]
Aneaster egg that replaces the Naughty Dog mascot in the opening credits with a topless woman is included within the game that can be activated by entering acheat code at startup. An issue ofGame Players was pulled from distribution atToys "R" Us for printing an unedited screenshot of the alternate title sequence.[19][23][24]Rings of Power was showcased at the 1991 SummerConsumer Electronics Show,[25] and released in January 1992.[2]
| Publication | Score |
|---|---|
| GamePro | 21/25[2] |
| VideoGames & Computer Entertainment | 6/10[3] |
| Mean Machines | 41%[4] |
| MegaTech | 49%[26] |
Rings of Power received mixed reviews upon release. Earth Angel ofGamePro compared the game's size toThe Seven Cities of Gold and felt that its isometric view, battle scenes and "terrific" music made it unique, but mentioned that thescrolling was somewhat choppy and the gameplay had a steep learning curve.[2] Howard H. Wen ofVideoGames & Computer Entertainment commended the presentation (describing it as "Ultima with the look ofPopulous") and was engrossed by the magnitude of the setting. He considered the quests to be interesting and not excessively challenging, but remarked that the more dramatized scenarios were cliched, deeming the backstory to be "from theTolkien assembly line". His biggest criticism was the difficult diagonal control scheme, suggesting that apoint and click system would have been more suitable. He also complained of the uninspired musical direction, and mentioned that the option to toggle music off failed to function when entering a building.[3]MegaTech said that the game was rendered dull and virtually unplayable by poor controls and difficult combat.[26] While Radion Automatic andJulian Rignall ofMean Machines acknowledged the size of the game and its promising concept and design, they considered its potential to have been wasted by slow, unresponsive and frustrating gameplay, "shambolic" scrolling, and poor graphics and sound.[4]
Rings of Power was a moderate commercial success,[27] selling its entire initial allotment of 100,000 copies in three months. However, EA declined to reprint it due to its large and expensive cartridge size compared toJohn Madden Football, which was selling faster.[16] EA's decision was also influenced by Sega granting only a fixed number of cartridges to reorder, as well as the royalties Naughty Dog would have to be paid as an external developer.[18] The experience of losing EA's support disillusioned Gavin and Rubin, and led them to take a brief hiatus from the video game industry. The game's sales helped fund the development of Naughty Dog's next project,Way of the Warrior.[16]
Thalmus the Wise: Void and his minions seek the Rings even as we speak. You must each form parties and find them before Void can reassemble the Rod. The locations are... DARIUS, YOU ATTACK ME! I feared that Void's influence reached this far... Students, DISPERSE! /Text: Your master's dying word forces itself into the mind of all present, scattering them across the globe.
Nexus the Benevolent: You have proved your worthiness, and I shall leave the Rod of Creation in your trust. Use it wisely to rule your people. It upsets the balance between my brother and I and we are better off without it. Good luck to you and your world.
Text: And so Buc too left the realm of Nexus and returned to his world. There he used the power of the Rod of Creation to build a mighty palace where the Fount of Heaven once stood. From that palace he would direct the destiny of his world.
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